2. in the US, esp in this economy, it's hard to get a job before you have (successful) bar results in hand.

Andrew, was I right about this?

I haven't really witnessed the job market from the perspective of an admitted attorney, so I can't say for sure. I think this is probably true for the people that don't go to big firms. The smaller firms don't hire people just to hire people like the big ones. They only hire when there's an actual need, and if they need an attorney a JD probably won't be good enough. I think (and hope) there's some truth to your assertion.

The 9 month US News stat makes sense. Of course everyone has a job within 9 months. If I still don't have a job after 8.5 months, I'm working at McDonalds.

2. in the US, esp in this economy, it's hard to get a job before you have (successful) bar results in hand.

Andrew, was I right about this?

I haven't really witnessed the job market from the perspective of an admitted attorney, so I can't say for sure. I think this is probably true for the people that don't go to big firms. The smaller firms don't hire people just to hire people like the big ones. They only hire when there's an actual need, and if they need an attorney a JD probably won't be good enough. I think (and hope) there's some truth to your assertion.

The 9 month US News stat makes sense. Of course everyone has a job within 9 months. If I still don't have a job after 8.5 months, I'm working at McDonalds.

im not sure if usnews would count the mcdonalds type jobs as qualifying as valid employment, otherwise the %ile salary data for private sector jobs would be WAAAAY off...

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lexylit

i was at b&n yesterday so i picked up one of those guide-to-law-school books that sorted by various rankings... and the list that sorted from highest percent employed at graduation had BU tied for first with something like 100% employed. (and BC was right there too, which is similarly bull as i learned from my brother's experience.)

i knew they boosted the stats some, but that's pretty egregious. when it comes down to choosing schools i guess i'll know better than to put a lot of stock in those numbers and rankings one more reason to go with your gut, not your USNWR spreadsheet.

I bet they would count McDonalds as employed. They probably require the school to fill out a form, and the school probably counts anything they can as employment. Does US News make a distinction as to "private practice" or not? If so, there's probably an "other" category so McDonalds employees don't get counted as private practice. I know that BU is keen to tell you the median private practice instead of the average. With a system like that, a couple McDonalds managers wouldn't have any effect on the number (assuming there were a couple big firm lawyers matching them at the other end of the scale).

Of course this is mostly just a theory of mine. I don't, for the record, expect to see any of my classmates working at McDonalds... because I never go to McDonalds.

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lexylit

i'm sure they break it down somewhere, but this particular list was striking in that it just ranked schools from most to least employed. or maybe it was by salary and im confused... but it listed the median figure you give (125) and about a dozen schools report that number, then it jumps down to 115, and you have to figure those schools (a bunch of t14s) have comparable stats and were just crunching them differently, right?

it will be pretty ironic if i end up jobless out of LS, since the job market accounts for 90% of the reason i dropped out of my phd